ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, December 7, 1996 TAG: 9612090017
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: MACON, GA.
SOURCE: The New York Times
IN THE BOOK, Kirby Godsey rejects the belief that every word of the Bible is literally true and suggests that salvation may not depend on one's acceptance of Christ as a personal savior.
Nearly 100 years ago, William Whitsitt was drummed out as president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., after writing a book that questioned the long-held belief that the Baptist practice of immersing the faithful dated from the time of Jesus.
Historians later demonstrated the correctness of Whitsitt's view that the practice had not begun until the 17th century, but the furor over his beliefs had long since cost him his job.
A century later, another leading Baptist intellectual is fighting, so far successfully, to preserve his career after writing a book that many fundamentalist Baptists consider heretical.
In the book, R. Kirby Godsey, the president of Mercer University here, second in size only to Baylor among the nation's Baptist-affiliated universities, rejects the belief that every word of the Bible is literally true and suggests that salvation may not depend on one's acceptance of Christ as a personal savior.
The publication of Godsey's book, ``When We Talk About God Let's Be Honest'' (Smyth & Helwys Publishing, 1996), is the latest flashpoint in a civil war of nearly two decades between fundamentalists and moderates in the country's largest Protestant denomination. While the book has prompted some fundamentalist leaders to call for Godsey's resignation, Mercer's board of trustees strongly affirmed his status at a meeting Thursday.
Godsey describes the book as a reflection on his personal spiritual journey. But fundamentalist Baptist leaders say the book makes them worry about the content of Christian education at Mercer and other Southern Baptist colleges.
``The book breaks severely with historical Baptist understanding of the Scriptures and historical Baptist understanding of Christian doctrine,'' said Dr. Lester Cooper Jr., chairman of the executive committee of the Georgia Baptist Convention, the fundamentalist-controlled umbrella group for the state's Southern Baptist churches.
``Our position is that while as an individual he is free to go in any direction he wishes, Georgia Baptists have the privilege to expect the presidents of their institutions to be Georgia Baptists.''
Last month the Georgia Baptist Convention, which elects Mercer's trustees and provides 2 percent of the university's budget, condemned the book in a resolution and asked Godsey to ``prayerfully reconsider his theological convictions.'' The 63 bookstores owned by the Baptist Sunday School Board have pulled the book from their shelves. And a number of Baptist leaders have called on Godsey to either recant or resign.
On Thursday, however, the university's trustees voted unanimously to affirm Godsey's presidency and the institution's commitment to academic freedom. The faculty of the university, which has about 7,000 students, had already voted to support him.
``The views of President Godsey do not exceed the boundaries of academic independence in a Baptist university,'' the trustees stated in their resolution, adding that the book ``has no adverse effect on the educational mission of the university.''
Godsey, 60, a philosopher and Baptist minister who has led Mercer for 18 years, said at a news conference that he had no regrets about the content of his book. But he did lament the outrage it had inspired, ``the kind of pain that this has seemed to create for some people.''
Southern Baptist scholars say this kind of internecine dispute is inevitable in an era when Baptist churches and universities are struggling to find coexistence between the denomination's prevailing fundamentalism and the academy's need for intellectual flexibility.
Some Southern Baptist universities, including Furman in Greenville, S.C., and Wake Forest in Winston-Salem, N.C., have chosen in recent years to sever their financial and governance ties to the state Baptist conventions that long supported them. The motivation, said William Hull, former provost of Samford University in Birmingham, Ala., and an authority on Baptist education, has been ``constant harassment from militant fundamentalist preachers.''
Several of the universities, including Mercer and Wake Forest, have opened theology schools to provide an alternative to Southern Baptist seminaries that are now firmly controlled by fundamentalists.
``Baptists continually have this love-hate relationship with education,'' said Bill Leonard, dean of Wake Forest's new divinity school. ``They want you to get an education as long as it doesn't change you or make you think.''
Mercer's leaders, including Godsey, said Thursday that they hoped to buck the trend toward severance by preserving a formal relationship with the Georgia Baptist Convention.
``I want to try to find a way to keep that relationship in place, because faith and reason are not enemies,'' Godsey said in an interview. ``But clearly neither the church nor the university can flourish if they try to control one another. We need a free university and a free pulpit.''
The university's officials see practical reasons for maintaining the relationship. In addition to the Georgia Baptist Convention's annual direct subsidy to Mercer, churches provide a useful vehicle for student recruitment, and many churches offer scholarships to members who attend Mercer.
Leaders of the Georgia Baptist Convention will meet next week to consider Thursday's vote by the trustees. Cooper, the state body's chairman, would not speculate Thursday about whether it would begin the process of eliminating its financing for Mercer.
Godsey's book, meanwhile, is doing quite well.
``We would have been pleased with sales of 3,000 on that book,'' said Cecil Staton Jr., the president and publisher of Smyth & Helwys, founded in Macon in 1990 with the goal of publishing books by religious moderates. ``We have sold a little over 8,000 now and have 10,000 in print, and I'm pretty confident we'll sell all of them.
``Frankly, the controversy has helped with the sales.''
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